Mississippi is marking its bicentennial by opening two history museums that take an unflinching look at the state’s past - complete with displays of slave chains, Ku Klux Klan robes and graphic photos of lynchings and firebombings. (Dec. 5)

In this Nov. 10, 2017 image, Ellie Dahmer, foreground, wife of Vernon Dahmer of Hattiesburg, who was killed in 1966 by the Ku Klux Klan, their daughter Bettie Dahmer, and an older brother Harold, right, view some of the artifacts in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum during a private preview in Jackson, Miss. Dahmer was targeted because he encouraged fellow African-Americans to register to vote during the Jim Crow era. The facility is adjacent to the newly built Museum of Mississippi History, that documents the state's rich history and the diversity of its people. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Nov. 7, 2017 photograph, media and invited guests were able to get a "sneak peak" into the state's two new history museums, the Museum of Mississippi History, seen, and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, in Jackson, Miss. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Nov. 10, 2017 image, a burned cross, a Klan robe and hand bills announcing Klan meetings are among the artifacts that are on display in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss. This facility is adjacent to the newly built Museum of Mississippi History, that documents the state's rich history and the diversity of its people. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Nov. 10, 2017 image, a monolith listing the names, dates and rationale for the lynching of African-American residents rests in the foreground of a photograph of a burning Ku Klux Klan cross on display in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss. The monolith is one of several that line this gallery with the documented lynchings. Room has been left for updating as needed. This facility is adjacent to the newly built Museum of Mississippi History, that documents the state's rich history and the diversity of its people. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Nov. 10, 2017 image, booking photographs of Freedom Riders, stories and images of civil rights activists attempting to register and organize African Americans in the state, mix with a re-created jail cell and police paddy wagon in "A Tremor in the Iceberg," gallery that also features a number of interactive electronic exhibits in the Jackson, Miss., museum. This facility is adjacent to the newly built Museum of Mississippi History, that documents the state's rich history and the diversity of its people. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Nov. 10, 2017 photograph, an interactive electronic exhibit and the mixed media collage highlight the struggle of James Meredith, an African-American veteran to enroll and attend the then all-white University of Mississippi in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, in Jackson, Miss. This facility is adjacent to the newly built Museum of Mississippi History, that documents the state's rich history and the diversity of its people. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Nov. 10, 2017 image, the story of the three civil rights workers who were kidnapped, murdered and had their bodies hidden by the Ku Klux Klan, is told as is the establishing of the the state funded Sovereignty Commission, an agency that spied on its citizens in the "I Question America," gallery in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss., museum. This facility is adjacent to the newly built Museum of Mississippi History, that documents the state's rich history and the diversity of its people. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

In this Nov. 10, 2017 photo, work crews and archivists are putting the final touches to "This Little Light of Mine," gallery, a soaring space in the heart of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, in Jackson, Miss., that is filled with natural light from large windows. Civil rights activists are honored with words and images, and the music of the movement emanates from a interactive dramatic light sculpture. This facility is adjacent to the newly built Museum of Mississippi History, that documents the state's rich history and its diversity. Work crews and archivists are putting the final touches on the two museums set to open Dec. 9. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Mississippi is marking its bicentennial by opening two history museums that take an unflinching look at the state’s past - complete with displays of slave chains, Ku Klux Klan robes and graphic photos of lynchings and firebombings. (Dec. 5)

Hard history: Mississippi museums explore slavery, Klan era

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS

Dec. 06, 2017

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — In the 1950s and '60s, segregationist whites waved Confederate flags and slapped defiant bumper stickers on cars declaring Mississippi "the most lied about state in the Union."

Those were ways of defiantly pushing back against African-Americans who dared challenge racial oppression, and taking a jab at journalists covering the civil rights movement.

Decades later, as Mississippi marks its bicentennial, the state is getting an unflinching look at its complex, often brutal past in two history museums, complete with displays of slave chains, Ku Klux Klan robes and graphic photos of lynchings and firebombings.

The Museum of Mississippi History takes a 15,000-year view, from the Stone Age through modern times. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum concentrates on a shorter, but intense span, from 1945 to 1976.

They open Saturday, the day before the 200th anniversary of Mississippi becoming the 20th state.

The two distinct museums under a single roof are both funded by state tax dollars and private donations. Officials insist the museums aren't intended to be "separate-but-equal" in a state where that phrase was invoked to maintain segregated school systems for whites and blacks that were separate and distinctly unequal.

Mississippi is marking its bicentennial by opening two history museums that take an unflinching look at the state’s past - complete with displays of slave chains, Ku Klux Klan robes and graphic photos of lynchings and firebombings. (Dec. 5)

"We are telling a much longer story in the Museum of Mississippi History, a much deeper story in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum," said Katie Blount, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. "We want everybody to walk in one door, side by side, to learn all of our state's stories."

The general history museum depicts Native American culture, European settlement, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. It examines natural disasters, including the Mississippi River flood in 1927 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It also has only-in-Mississippi items such as the crown Mary Ann Mobley wore as Miss America 1959.

The museums' opening caps a yearlong bicentennial commemoration. Some events celebrated Mississippi's success at producing influential authors and musicians, such as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, B.B. King and Elvis Presley. Others took a critical look slavery and segregation.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend the museums' opening, a White House official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the trip before a formal announcement. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, a Trump supporter, invited the president. The Mississippi NAACP president is asking Bryant to rescind the invitation, with state chapter president Charles Hampton saying "an invitation to a president that has aimed to divide this nation is not becoming of this historic moment."

Mississippi — one of the nation's poorest states, population 59 percent white and 38 percent black — remains divided by one of its most visible symbols. It's the last state with a flag featuring the Confederate battle emblem that critics see as racist. All eight public universities, and several cities and counties, stopped flying it in recent years.

There's no flagpole outside the new museums.

Ellie Dahmer, the 92-year-old widow of slain civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer, said the flag represents an unabashed defense of slavery. She marveled at the existence of the civil rights museum in a state that won't abandon the banner.

A display in the museum tells of the 1966 KKK firebombing of the Dahmer home outside Hattiesburg after local NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer announced he'd pay poll taxes for black people registering to vote. He fired back at Klansmen who were shooting at his burning house. The family escaped, but Vernon Dahmer's lungs were seared; he died. The couple's 10-year-old daughter was severely burned.

Parts of the Dahmers' bullet-riddled truck are in the museum with photos.

The Mississippi museum joins several others focused on civil rights: the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta ; the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee; the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington has attracted crowds since opening in 2016.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a 49-year-old Mississippi native who chairs African-American Studies at Princeton University, said "Mississippi was ground zero" for the civil rights movement, and it's significant that the state presents an honest account of its history.

"America can't really turn a corner with regards to its racist and violent past and present until the South, and particularly a state like Mississippi, confronts it — and confronts it unflinchingly," Glaude said.

Ku Klux Klan robes are on display. So's the remnant of a cross that was burned in 1964 outside white merchants' in McComb after they refused to fire black employees who registered to vote. So are mug shots of black and white Freedom Riders, who were arrested in Jackson in 1961 for challenging segregation on buses.

A large display tells about Emmett Till, the black teenager from Chicago who was kidnapped and killed after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman working in a Mississippi grocery store in 1955.

The central gallery provides a hopeful respite: An abstract sculpture 30 feet (9 meters) tall lights up as a soundtrack plays the folk song "This Little Light of Mine." As more visitors enter, more voices join the chorus and more lights flicker, symbolizing how one person's work can become part of a larger effort that leads to change.—